Artist

Kim Strommen

Wrapped, woven and poured work at architectural scale.

Kim Strommen is an artist, educator and arts administrator. His work in mixed media draws on craft and painting and has taken the form of wall hangings, woven metal sculpture and architecturally scaled environments.

In 1982 the Saint Louis Art Museum devoted an exhibition to his work, Currents 17. He later served for more than two decades as dean of Temple University Rome, and he continues to make art.

Selected work Biography
Tall flame-shaped cluster of curved wrapped rods rising from a pile of horizontal poles, beside a wall label reading Kim Strommen, ropes and poles.
Ropes & Poles. Installation view.

Selected Work

Photographs of installations, sculpture and paintings. Titles, dates and dimensions appear where they are documented.

“I want the work to evolve, to be playful, inventive.”

Kim Strommen, 1982

Ropes & Poles

Ropes & Poles, 1981 to 1982, is the title under which Kim Strommen's work was presented in Currents 17 at the Saint Louis Art Museum (September 28 to November 7, 1982). Dyed and torn canvas strips are wrapped around rope and lengths of wood. The museum described works that could range from six to fifteen feet in height and of any breadth. The photographs below show wrapped rope and pole constructions. Venues and dates of the individual photographs are not identified.

  • Tall curving wrapped rods, a field of leaning poles and a pole-framed tent in a hall with a gilded ceiling.
  • Panels of colored fabric on a pole lattice, a fountain of curved rods and a long coil of wrapped rope across a dark floor.
  • Large lattice of wrapped poles leaning against a ladder-like frame in a hall with an ornate ceiling.
  • Tall flame-shaped cluster of curved wrapped rods rising from a pile of horizontal poles, beside a wall label reading Kim Strommen, ropes and poles.
  • Pole lattices holding yellow, red, olive, blue and orange fabric panels, with coils of wrapped rope on the floor.
  • S-shaped floor sculpture of twisted ropes wrapped in muted strips of cloth, seen from above.
  • Long wrapped-rope form curving across a concrete floor beside a leaning lattice of wrapped poles.
  • Coiled rope on the floor, a slanted lattice of wrapped poles and a tall conical form in a white brick room.
  • Wooden frame hung with loops of wrapped rope above a large circular coil of wrapped rope.
  • Large lean-to lattice of wrapped poles against a white brick wall.
  • Curved row of upright wrapped poles joined by horizontal rails, standing in a concrete hall.
  • Skylit gallery holding a long rope serpent, a frame hung with wrapped ropes and lattices of wrapped poles.
  • View through foreground poles wrapped in red, orange, blue and green strips into a skylit gallery of more wrapped structures.
  • Two forms of wrapped strips, one hung like a curtain of loops and one an A-frame cone, in front of a white brick wall.
  • Wrapped ropes looped over a crossbar and hanging against a white brick wall.
  • Mound of thick wrapped rope flowing across a terrazzo gallery floor.
  • Close-up of rope and poles wrapped in strips of printed and solid fabric.
  • Close-up of curving ropes tightly wrapped in red, blue, green and pink cloth.

Wall Pieces

Hanging and wall-mounted pieces of wrapped, braided and woven canvas. Timothy Burns Gallery in St. Louis presented work of this kind in January 1984 as Woven Sculpture: recent painted constructions. Rope Bundle I and Rope Bundle II, both from 1983 and made of acrylic on canvas, nylon and steel, were reproduced on the exhibition announcement.

  • Long twisted braid of painted canvas strips hung across a gallery wall, its ends fraying into bundles.
  • Gallery corner with a woven grid of wrapped poles on legs and two wall-hung bundles with knotted waists and trailing ends.
  • Gallery corner with wavy wrapped cords on the wall, a blue woven spindle and a pink triangular woven frame on short legs.
  • Two wall pieces in a gallery corner: a U-shaped bundle of colored strips and a long curtain of hanging strands.
  • Two wall-mounted works of hanging fabric strips, one tall and dark, one a long multicolored band with threads trailing below.
  • Tall wall-hung arch wrapped in multicolored strips that ends in two long tassels of shredded cloth.
  • Small wrapped arch opening into two long curtains of red, orange, blue, yellow and green strips.
  • Wall piece of nested oval loops of wrapped strips, like a heavy necklace.
  • Freestanding woven panel of blue cloth strips on a frame of wrapped poles, leaning against a wall.
  • Woven blue panel on a leaning pole frame, with frayed strips trailing at the bottom.

Stacked Strips

Painted canvas cut into strips and stacked in layers, divided by a vertical seam, with threads left to hang.

  • Trapezoid wall piece of stacked ochre, periwinkle, pink and brown canvas strips divided by a thin red seam, with threads hanging below.
  • Tall tapering wall piece of horizontal strips in black, navy and white-pink divided by a vertical seam.
  • Half-round wall piece of stacked blue, gray, rust and white strips with threads trailing from the lower edge.
  • Detail of stacked canvas strips in lilac, ochre, rose and brown with cord laced across them.
  • Detail of the edge of a layered work: paint-heavy canvas strips in blue, rust, mustard and gray with loose threads.

Woven Metal and Wire

Wire, metal bands, rope and branches, woven, bound and hung. Some forms hang from rope; others stand on slender legs or lean against the wall.

  • Kim Strommen standing beside two hanging black woven forms in a tall white gallery.
  • Kim Strommen, smiling, standing with his hands on his hips beside two hanging black woven forms in a white gallery.
  • Five tall wire and metal-band figures with spiked halos standing on slender legs in a row against a cream wall.
  • Three hanging ribbed cage forms in orange and dark metal suspended in a white room corner.
  • Dark woven wire urn on four legs beside a tall green wire cone in a white room corner.
  • Three tall standing forms in orange, olive and blue-green wire, topped with brush-like tufts.
  • Hanging wire baskets, spheres and nets strung from lines across a white gallery corner, with ropes coiled on the floor.
  • Strings of wire-mesh spheres and a rope of colored discs hanging above floor nests of reed, wire and rope.
  • Three standing forms: a blue-green wire crescent, an orange wire gourd on curved legs, and branches woven with red wire.
  • Seven tall branches wrapped in orange, red, cream and brown cord, leaning against a pale wall.
  • Kim Strommen standing beside a long curving wall-hung form of dark woven mesh that fans into a grid at one end.
  • Tall vase-shaped sculpture of stacked copper and rust metal bands with fine wire spikes, against a cream wall.
  • Detail of stacked rusted metal bands bound with wire barbs.

Paintings and Poured Work

Paint poured, flung and dripped, laid down in ribbons and peeled from the studio floor.

  • Abstract painting of rows of small multicolored splash marks on a lavender field with rainbow streaks curving along the edges.
  • Tall abstract painting of small pastel and dark paint drips rippling across a blue-gray field.
  • Abstract painting of crossing diagonal ribbons of yellow, blue, pink and dark paint on a tan ground.
  • Square abstract painting of a dense web of poured colored lines on a cream ground.
  • Patchwork surface of ochre, terracotta and cream paint with embedded dark fragments and a thin cord.
  • Abstract work with a large tilted brown shape over an ochre and cream field and a mauve band at the base.
  • Detail of poured lines of red, blue, yellow and green paint crossing a cream ground.
  • Detail of a peeled paint surface in terracotta, green, ochre and cream.

Outdoor Panels

Painted fabric panels hung from striped poles on park lawns.

  • Painted fabric panels in red, aqua and yellow hung from striped poles on a lawn with bare trees and city buildings behind.
  • Row of painted fabric panels on striped poles across an autumn lawn under a tree with orange leaves.
  • Line of striped poles carrying painted fabric panels across a park lawn with bare trees and a large stone house behind.

Process

Dyed strips sorted by color, rope wrapped by hand, paint poured on the floor.

  • Bearded man in a white T-shirt and red trousers seated in a studio, winding a thick rope with strips of dyed cloth.
  • Man in a basement studio lifting a bundle of lilac fabric strips above floor heaps of dyed strips sorted by color.
  • Man standing at the far end of a very long twisted rope of cloth strips laid across a paint-stained studio floor.
  • Studio floor covered in heaps of dyed fabric strips arranged in patches of pink, blue, tan and black.
  • Dyed fabric strips hanging from studio beams above a paint-stained floor.
  • Man kneeling inside a lattice of wrapped poles in a gallery, working on the structure.
  • Bearded man crouching in a studio beside a can of yellow paint and broad bands of yellow and salmon paint on the floor.
  • Bearded man in a purple bandana lifting a long strip of dried paint from a striped studio floor.
  • Man in a bandana at a white wall, attaching a horizontal strip of layered blue and brown paint.

Biography

Kim Strommen standing with his hands on his hips in a white gallery
Kim Strommen

Kim Strommen is an artist, educator and arts administrator. He studied painting at the University of South Dakota (BFA, 1969) and Washington University in St. Louis (MFA, 1973), and worked in St. Louis from the early 1970s into the mid-1980s. In the early 1970s he was one of three artists who started the Emden Gallery, an artist-run space in the city’s Central West End.

His work began in painting and moved steadily off the wall. As the Saint Louis Art Museum described it in 1982, he first explored alternative ways of putting paint on canvas: pressing canvas into paint and Rhoplex poured on the floor and peeling it up with its cracked, textured surface; staining canvases and combining them in stripes or strata; and later hanging free canvas ribbons and gathering them into bundles. By the early 1980s he was building at a new scale, with works from six to fifteen feet high and of any breadth. He dyed and tore canvas strips and wrapped them with rope and wire around lengths of wood, a process he called both energetic and meditative.

In 1982 the Saint Louis Art Museum presented Currents 17: Kim Strommen, nine works in mixed media that included Floor Twister, Dwelling, Tent and Fence. Timothy Burns Gallery in St. Louis, which represented him in the early 1980s, gave him a solo exhibition, Woven Sculpture: recent painted constructions, in 1984. He was included in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s juried Contemporary Philadelphia Artists in 1990 and received a regional National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in sculpture in 1985. Washington University’s Gallery of Art, now the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, holds his Stack No. 9 (1979).

Alongside the studio he worked in education and administration. He was an assistant and later associate dean of the School of Fine Arts at Washington University, and in 1991 he became dean of Temple University Rome. He held that post for more than two decades, living in Italy for over twenty years, and Temple credited him with leading the campus through growth and modernization. He is now Professor Emeritus of Foundations at Temple’s Tyler School of Art and Dean Emeritus of Temple University Rome.

He continues to make art today.

Curriculum Vitae

Education

1973
MFA, Painting. Washington University in St. Louis.
1969
BFA, Painting. University of South Dakota.

Solo Exhibitions

1984
Woven Sculpture: recent painted constructions. Timothy Burns Gallery, St. Louis. January 21 to February 26.
1982
Currents 17: Kim Strommen. Saint Louis Art Museum. September 28 to November 7. Nine works in mixed media: Palm Trees, Twister, Floor Twister, Dwelling, Hanger, Tent, Fence, Site #2, Barrier.

Group Exhibitions

1990
Contemporary Philadelphia Artists: A Juried Exhibition. Philadelphia Museum of Art. April 22 to July 8.
Fibers in the Field. Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis.

Fellowships and Collections

1985
Visual Artists Fellowship in Sculpture (regional program, Mid-America Arts Alliance), National Endowment for the Arts.
1981
Stack No. 9 (1979) purchased by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (Hassam and Speicher Purchase Fund) and given to the Washington University Gallery of Art, now the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.

Positions

Present
Professor Emeritus of Foundations, Tyler School of Art, Temple University. Dean Emeritus, Temple University Rome.
From 1991
Dean, Temple University Rome. More than two decades. Member of the steering committee of the Association of American College and University Programs in Italy.
1978 to 1986
Assistant Dean, then Associate Dean, School of Fine Arts, Washington University in St. Louis (as listed in directories and the 1986 yearbook).
Early 1970s
Co-founder, Emden Gallery, St. Louis (artist-run gallery, Central West End).

Representation

Early 1980s
Timothy Burns Gallery, St. Louis.

Publications and Press

1990
Contemporary Philadelphia Artists: A Juried Exhibition. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Catalogue.
1982
“Artists and Their Work: The ‘St. Louis School’?” St. Louis newspaper feature, October 28.
1982
Currents 17: Kim Strommen. Saint Louis Art Museum.

Further reading

Contact

Inquiries

Inquiries about Kim Strommen’s work are handled through his son’s site, garrettstrommen.com.

Contact